Pretty Enough to Make a Devil Blush
by on rooftops
Summary: It turned out that while falling in love with Lysander had been incredibly simple—a tiny fraction of sunlit afternoon—falling out of love with him was going to be impossible. — Molly/Lysander


**disclaimer**: Notmine.

I think I've fallen in love.

And that's odd, because I've always told myself that I wouldn't. That I would hold myself apart from it all, that I would be better than silly emotions. Because love makes you weak, and all that shit. (Oh, I could quote clichés on both ends for hours, but honestly, I don't think you want to hear it.)

It's not like I had any reason to avoid love, not really. Dad and Mum are always all over each other in that oh-so-refined way they have, and my aunts and uncles seem sickeningly happy. Honestly, there isn't even a failed marriage around for me to point at and say, "Look, see, that's why. Love makes you hurt like _that_."

I couldn't say that.

But, hey, Voldemort was born because of love in its most obsessive, concentrated form. So there.

(And yeah, Uncle Harry would probably say something about Voldemort being evil because of a lack of love. But you know what, Uncle Harry? I really don't give a fuck. That's all in the past.)

The point, though, is that Lysander Scamander is a bastard. And that Lysander Scamander exists. Actually, yeah, that right there is the problem.

Because, like I said, I think I've fallen in love.

It started one day in late May our sixth year. (So I can pinpoint the very second – the very tick of the clock – that marked the beginning of my downfall. What of it?)

We – that is, Lysander and Lorcan and Lucy and me – were lying on the grounds out by Hagrid's hut, because for some reason Lucy wanted to be near the forest and Lorcan was in one of his moods where he did whatever Lucy asked him to and Lysander was always just there. So we were awkwardly sitting near the forest and I could feel everyone in the school watching us like they were waiting for us to do something crazy, maybe go into the forest and come back out with werewolves or centaurs or unicorns tagging along behind us.

And then Lorcan said something ridiculous about the way the trees looked – like they were draped in emeralds, or some bullshit poetic nonsense like that – and Lysander rolled his blue eyes at me and I thought, _oh, shit,_ because those eyes were suddenly essential.

I managed to roll my eyes back at Lys and tell Lorcan, "You really need to stop trying to turn yourself into a poet. You're not a poet. You're a wizard."

He scowled, "Can't I be both?"

And Lucy laughed, "You cannot be a poet."

"It's true," Lysander stretched and I watched the way his arms were silhouetted in the air for a moment before snatching my mind back from the precipice of lust, "You really suck at trying to sound romantic, Lor. Better keep it all scientific. Talk about photosynthesis or whatever."

"I wasn't trying to sound _romantic_," he scowled, chucking a handful of dirt at Lysander, "I was trying to tell you lot what the forest looks like. Sorry for bringing something different into our conversation."

"Apology accepted," Lysander rolled over and stood, then grinned down at me and oh, _Merlin_, those lips. "I'm going back up to the castle. You coming, Moll?"

Obviously. I would have gone anywhere with him. If _he_ had asked me to go into the forest and get a werewolf to bring back to school, I'd have gone.

Which was stupid.

And proved the hypothesis that I had fallen in love in less than a second.

But I just stood and said, "Race you back to school?"

And he might have let me win, but I didn't think he had, because that's just not the type of thing that Lysander did. Lysander pushed himself just as hard as he pushed everyone else and he expected honesty even when no one sane would tell the truth, like back in October when he caught me trying to sneak into Ravenclaw (because Lucy wanted to know if Lorcan still kept a journal, and if he did, what he wrote about her, and because I wanted to sift through Lysander's things) and he looked at me as if he thought that _of course_ I would tell him what I was doing, trying to answer the riddle. I didn't, because I believed in liars.

But I've always thought that honesty is a bloody incredible trait to have. And I've always been glad that Lysander has it.

He hadn't let me win on purpose, so it was odd that I reached the front doors first because he was always quicker, with a long runner's body and slim, compact muscles that just make him look so very _solid_ and strong but tender too, like if he held me I'd feel as if the earth and the universe had somehow combined to make his the surest and most satisfying hug ever.

I turned and leaned against the doors, watching as he jogged up the grass toward the front steps. "Sorry, Moll, I had to ask Lucy something."

I grinned, "You know you're not allowed to date her. She's all Lorcan's."

He shook his head, looking at me as if I were being ridiculous, "Come on, Molly. As if I would ever look at Lucy that way."

"I was joking, Lysander. Honestly. You don't need to take everything so seriously," I pulled open the doors and led the way inside, turning to face him in the entrance hall. "Did you want to study in the library? Or Gryffindor or Ravenclaw?"

"Do we have to study?"

I raised an eyebrow at him, "Ten minutes ago you were complaining about how stressed you are about McGonagall's exam, that you hadn't studied enough. Do you want to blow it off? I'm fine, if you do, but I thought that's why you wanted to come in."

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck so his pale fingers snarled in his too-long blond hair, "Yeah, yeah. You're right. Let's go to the library."

"Don't worry, Lys. Soon it'll be summer and you can do whatever you want," I told him as I began walking up the staircases.

"Yeah, but you won't be around."

"Who's to say we won't hang out in the summer? It's not as if Mum and Dad have anything thrilling planned for Lucy or me. Dad wants us to volunteer in the Department of Magical Beings or some such nonsense and Mum is fighting for us to work at the library, so either way we'll be working all week. But we'll be allowed out on weekends, and then you can see as much of me as your little heart desires." I grinned over my shoulder at him, and he frowned back.

"Except that _my_ parents are taking me and Lor on some absurd quest for some nonexistent creature that supposedly lives in Chile. As in, over the Atlantic, down below Mexico and Brazil and very, very far from here, Chile. So you won't see us at all."

"What?" I was one step above him and I whirled to face him, my eyes on level with his for once, and my breath caught as those bloody blue eyes threw deadly promises into my heart. I shook myself, "Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

"Because we just found out about it yesterday. Come on, Moll. Library, remember?" He walked past me and I hurried to catch up.

"But that's not fair. They can't just take you away for an entire summer!"

"Unfortunately, they're our parents, and we're still not of age, so they can. Besides, it could be fun, even if it will suck to be away for so long." He shrugged, "But we can write to each other."

"Of course we can. But it's not the same." I was pouting. "It's just…what am I going to _do_ all summer?"

He snorted, "You've got a thousand cousins running around all the time. I imagine you'll be fine. Just go visit the Potters and start pitting Lily against James and Al and see what sibling-rivalry-explosion you can start up. Or go see Fred and Roxie and inspire them for some new joke shop shit. Or go visit the Malfoys and annoy Mr. Malfoy until he turns bright red. You've survived summers without me before."

This was true – his parents often dragged him and Lorcan off on silly searches for crazily-named creatures that undoubtedly had never actually been seen. They had spent their childhood travelling around Africa, and they probably would have moved somewhere in bloody _Antarctica _if they hadn't come to Hogwarts. But I hadn't spent a day without seeing Lys at least once since the beginning of last term, and his presence – his night-sky-eyes and his smile and the tenor of his voice – was as essential to my day as wings would be, if I were a bird.

And oh, Merlin, all of this was just so sickening, and I decided that I needed to fall out of love with Lysander Scamander immediately. Because I just couldn't handle myself when I sounded like that. Lysander as the wings to my bird, _honestly_. It was like someone had poured a cupful of absurdity into my morning pumpkin juice.

Unfortunately, Lysander didn't make it easy on me. He could have gone and chopped off all his lovely hair, gotten thick thick spectacles with glass so cloudy and scratched that his eyes didn't exist anymore, he could have eaten piles of chocolate frogs so he would have had to borrow Hagrid's clothes, he could have sewn his lips into a permanent frown and scribbled ink all over his face so he wasn't _him_ anymore.

Then maybe falling out of love with him would have been easy.

But he stayed himself as I followed him into the library and sat beside him pretending to study Transfiguration but really studying how close his knee was to mine beneath the table. He stayed himself that night, when he went down to the kitchen to get sandwiches for us to eat on the floor of North Tower, while we studied for Astronomy. He stayed himself the next day, too, when he squeezed my hand before we went in for Transfiguration and hissed "good luck", even though he was so pale with nerves that I thought he might need a heart transplant before exams were over.

And it turned out that while falling in love with Lysander had been incredibly simple – a tiny fraction of sunlit afternoon – falling _out_ of love with him was going to be impossible.  
But I'm a Gryffindor. We're tenacious.

It didn't help that Lucy kept talking him up. We were sitting on our beds on the last day of exams, trying to finish cramming for Potions and failing miserably, and she just would _not _shut up. "Oh, Lorcan was telling me this funny story yesterday. Has Lysander ever told you about the time he saved Lor from the wild bull they found in a field in Spain?"

Or "Lorcan told me that Lysander used to tell stories to his krup when he couldn't sleep."

And, "Lorcan says that Lysander talks about you all the time."

"You do realize that you're talking about Lysander more than Lorcan, right? Should I tell Lorcan that he's got some competition?" I snapped, grabbing my potions ingredients from where I had tossed them by my pillow and standing up.

"No. But maybe I should tell Lysander that you're in love with him." She grinned at me, and started singing, "Molly and Lysander sitting in a tree…"

I rolled my eyes, "You're so immature."

"Oh come on, admit it." She hopped off her bed and followed me from the dormitory, clutching her folder of potions ingredients.

"I do not like Lysander." I informed her as seriously as I could, suddenly grateful that I had watched Dom and Louis lie to their parents my entire childhood – I had learned cool sincerity from the very best.

She raised an eyebrow, "You do, though. You must know he likes you too."

"I don't, he doesn't, and how is this supposed to help me pass Potions?"

"It's not. It's supposed to help you pass life."

She hurried ahead of me and I followed after her, shaking my head at her stupid attempt at wisdom. "Life's not something you can pass, Luce." Not everything's a test, I wanted to remind her, not everything's the way Mum and Dad taught us it was.

"I know, but you should be happy in it." She entered the dungeons ahead of me and disappeared in a dark corner, where Lorcan already stood. I saw Lys toward the front of the room and walked toward him.

"Ready?" He asked.

"For this to be over," I told him, setting a fire beneath my cauldron and waiting for our professor to begin the exam.

And then it was over and I was gone, gone beyond the realms of sixth year and into the delightful reaches of summer hols, except we were still at school, and that made it a thousand times better. There were parties in all the houses that night, but while Lucy and Lorcan made the rounds, Lys and I slipped out of Gryffindor early, after drinking maybe just a _little_ too much firewhiskey, and waved at the Fat Lady as she shouted, "Filch is around. Get back here!"

But we didn't. I snatched at Lysander's hand and pulled him down the main staircase, and he laughed as I stumbled over the vanishing step and tugged at his hand a little more insistently in my rush. (Okay, maybe more than a bit too much.)

"Where're you taking me?" He asked, as he tightened his grip on my hand and pulled me closer to him, so we were walking down the stairs side-by-side, like two people who were together and knew they were together.

"To the Forest." I informed him, "Because we need to bring werewolves back to the school. Obviously."

"Oh, of course. Why didn't I think of that?" He laughed, but he let me walk out the front doors anyway, and I felt one flash of triumphant glee that we had managed to get out without running into Filch before I refocused on my goal – the dark, menacing expanse of trees. "Wait, really? You're really taking me to the Forest?"

"Don't be stupid." I shook my hair out of my face and turned to glare up at him, "I don't like the forest. I'm taking you _here_." I stomped my foot on the section of grass near the Forest and Hagrid's cabin, the place we had been sitting the week before.

"Why're you taking me _here_?" He mimicked my movement and maybe he hadn't had nearly as much to drink as I had or maybe he just held his liquor better, because he looked perfectly sober, standing gorgeous in the moonlight.

"Because," he was such an idiot, honestly. "This is where I first realized that I love you. And then I realized it again when we were going up to the castle and again when we were in the library and again when we were walking in the hallway and I especially realized it when we were eating dinner because do you know that when you eat you chew with your mouth open a little, which is disgusting, and you'll really have to change that, but it's also very cute, and then you…"

And then he kissed me.

And the next morning when I woke up with a bloody blinding headache and with Lysander's hand tracing patterns down my arm, I realized that even though I had self-destructed in my mission to forget about him, it all might have ended up okay.

After all, he gave me a Hangover Potion.  
And when he held me, I had the universe and the earth and the entire galaxy in my arms, stars and space and all.

**a/n:** Another short one? Crazy.  
Andandand, did you notice? No angst. Not a word of it. This was fluff. I think. Maybe there was angst? Was there?  
Reviews make me happy (and especially, please don't fave without reviewing. I like knowing what you're thinking!)


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